Flowers Of Evil 1971 Album

Mountain

This was one of those part-studio, part-live things packaged and sold as an album to conceal the reality behind the curtain - that Mountain was essentially breaking up, but it did not pay to reveal that knowledge to the general public. There is a concept in play here - that of American military personnel in Vietnam going hand-in-hand with a very specific drug issue - that's what the "Flowers of Evil" are referencing. But you get the feeling, especially from Felix's perspective, this is borne out of personal experience as well. Easily, the bittersweet groove that is the title track makes that above point very clear, along with "One Last Cold Kiss" and "Pride and Passion". It's almost as if the band has harnessed the cold, unfeeling energy of hard drugs and made that a bizarre form of self-expression. I should be saying that the live half of the record functions as the complete opposite of the studio tracks, but they really do not. "Dream Sequence" is a massive, stitched-together collection of previous tracks, covers, gargantuan West solos, and cool trade-offs between West and Felix, all of which runs for close to 25 minutes. What is lame is, they end it with a lackluster, sloppy version of "Mississippi Queen", as if to say, "all that jamming made us tired and it is time to nod off...good night!" But that is really the only minor misstep here. Otherwise, very interesting in that in many places they manage to stand the "classic" Mountain sound on its' head and still make it quite intriguing.